States where doctors are most likely to give you the WRONG diagnosis REVEALED

New York has been ranked as the worst state for medical malpractice in the country, according to a new report.

Data on the number of medical malpractice cases in all fifty states from 1990 to 2023 showed that states in the Northeast were the most likely to misdiagnose or fail to treat patients.

Medical malpractice is a legal action alleging that a doctor or healthcare provider was negligent, failed to perform basic duties, or caused a patient to die or be unnecessarily injured.

This can include missed or late diagnoses, botched surgeries or dangerous mix-ups of prescriptions.

Malpractice claims are often the result of a misdiagnosis. According to law firm Buchanan Firm, 31 percent of doctors are sued for failing to diagnose or delaying diagnosis

The report calculated the number of cases alongside the number of doctors and other health care workers in each state, and then took an average to determine how many occurred for each doctor.

The researchers found that New York ranked first with nearly 65,000 medical malpractice cases among 51,500 physicians. Pennsylvania and New Jersey followed close behind.

Alabama, meanwhile, was considered the safest state, with an average of just 0.151 malpractice reports per practitioner.

The data collected by law firm Gatti, Keltner, Bienvenu & Montesi, PLCcomes months after more than 75,000 Kaiser Permanente Unions workers staged the nation's largest health care strike, and U.S. hospitals have struggled with understaffing and overwhelming illnesses like Covid-19.

Population size could also have led to more cases in certain states, meaning doctors are responsible for more patients.

Mike Montesi, managing partner at the firm, said: “Interestingly, medical malpractice reports have been declining decade over decade. Between 2001 and 2010, the average annual total of medical malpractice payment reports was 16,182, declining to 11,906 for the following decade.”

“The East Coast appears to be the most dangerous region for medical patients, with six of the 10 states in the study having a coastline along the Atlantic Ocean.”

“With reports of understaffing and strikes for healthcare pay increases, it will be interesting to monitor medical malpractice incidents for potential peaks or troughs in the coming years.”

New York topped the list as the state with the highest medical malpractice rate.

According to the report, 64,594 medical malpractice payment reports have been recorded in the state since 1990.

With 64,594 practitioners, this amounts to an average of 1.25 cases per doctor.

The worst year for New York was 1992, when 2,562 reports were filed.

Although New York is still the worst state for medical malpractice, the numbers have fallen sharply since 2000. For example, the number of reports has fallen from 2,505 in 2001 to 1,162 in 2022.

In second place was Pennsylvania, with one malpractice report per 36,719 practitioners. The numbers were highest in the 1990s and early 2000s, with steady improvement since 2010.

New Jersey took third place, with two cases of medical malpractice for every three doctors. This amounted to a total of 30,906 incidents.

More than half of the reports cost less than $250,000, while 307 reports cost more than $2 million.

Rhode Island, Maryland, Indiana and Connecticut rounded out the bottom of the top 10 list with an average of 0.6 incidents per physician.

These high numbers may be partly due to the size of the population. New York has the fourth highest population density, with 19.8 million inhabitants.

Pennsylvania, which also ranks second on the malpractice list, is right behind New York, with a population of just under 13 million.

However, the most populous US state, California, did not make the list of the ten worst states.

Alabama was at the bottom of the list with the fewest malpractice cases. The state averaged just 0.151 reports per physician, with only 2,606 incidents since 1990.

Oregon was the second-best state, followed by Alaska, Arkansas, North Dakota and Colorado. Virginia, Arizona, Minnesota and Vermont rounded out the top 10 best states.

Population size could also have factored into which states came in at the bottom. Alabama ranks 24th in population, with approximately five million residents. Oregon follows closely, with 4.2 million inhabitants.

Malpractice claims are often the result of a misdiagnosis. According to law firm Buchanan Firm, 31 percent of physicians are being sued for failing to diagnose or delaying diagnosis.

Failure to treat or delay in treatment accounts for 16 percent of cases, and wrongful death accounts for 13 percent.

Earlier this year, the American Medical Association (AMA) reported that midwives were the most likely type of doctor to be sued between 2016 and 2022.

This may be due to possible deaths and other cases involving infants, which are emotionally more important than many other medical cases.